technology How drones can help extend battery life As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – more commonly known as “drones” – continue to capture public imagination, applications for their use in industry are rising rapidly. And as UAV designers strive to meet demand for ever-greater capabilities from their electrically-powered drones, they are looking to energy harvesting technologies as a potential means of enhancing mission fl ight times, payload weight limits – or both. drones dominate unit sales, representing 94 % of overall shipments. However, with entry-level drones costing just a few hundred Euros, they only con- stitute a fraction of revenues. Commercial drones, meanwhile, only represent 6 % of unit volumes, but substantially higher price tags (from thousands to tens of thousands of Euros) mean they are projected to represent over 60 % of non-military revenues. A growing list of applications Technology innovation is helping evolve new commercial use cases to drive strong growth, with drones being deployed across industries and ap- plications as diverse as mapping and inspection, aerial photography, journalism, emergency and medical response, infrastructure and logistics, sports and entertainment, security and surveillance, and Drone developers are exploring energy harvesting technologies to help extend battery life.agriculture. In many cases, they are replacing tradi- Source: Mouser Electronics tional methods of operation, reducing time and cost through lower requirement for human interaction and safety infrastructure. UAVs have been used in military applicationsfor decades, but their emergence as a main-stream technology over the past decade hastronic systems, they share the same basic limita-tion: namely that they require a source of electricalBut, in common with many other modern elec- been fueled by the huge success of smartphones– power! For drones, this is usually a battery power helping drive a “perfect storm“ of advances in system – inevitably resulting in power-weight trade- electronics and volume-driven cost reductions that o s that e ect size, maneuverability and fl ight time. has enabled the surging popularity of drones. The This is why many drone developers are exploring production of low-cost, lightweight MCU-powered the potential of energy harvesting technologies to fl ight controllers, sensors (from accelerometers tosupplement primary battery power systems. gyroscopes), global positioning systems and cameras, plus advanced battery and wireless technologies, has resulted in rapid proliferation of consumer andEnergy harvesting commercial-grade drones. Goldman Sachs research estimates that drone Energy harvesting (also sometimes known as “energy technologies will generate $ 100 billion by 2020 scavenging”) allows electronics to operate where across military, consumer and commercial sectors. there is no conventional power source, eliminat- The military sector still comprises 70 % of the total,ing or reducing the need for cables or replacement but beyond that, Gartner data shows that consumer batteries by using unconventional ambient energy 18 N° 5 – Septembre 2019